The Price of Pampering your Pet

July 29, 2010

Picture found on poochhotel.com

How much would you spend on your pooch? Does $10,000 a year sound crazy? Well not for the elite of the Silicon Valley. Kym McNicholas a reporter at Forbes and I got a chance to sit down with the owner of the Pooch Hotel, Robin Tomb, to get an exclusive interview and tour of the hotel.

“To our clients, these dogs are their kids. They treat them as such, and so do we. That’s what I think they really like about us.”

The Pooch hotel is the most expensive and luxurious Dog Hotel in the nation. Their most expensive room, the Palace Suite, starts at $100 per night. The hotel offers services like an aromatherapy bath, facial, pawdicure, swim sessions or even a walk on the treadmill and nutrition counseling.

Tomb explains “ We had a couple leave their 3 dogs for 17 days at $300 per night in the Palace Suite. At the end, including extra amenities like baths, the bill was upwards of $4,000. And they said it was worth it for peace of mind.”

While the economy is on a downturn, it hasn’t affected these dog owners. The Pooch hotel has two other locations in the Chicago area but Tomb says the hotel in Silicon Valley is by far there most successful location and is regularly at 99% capacity.

Another service the hotel provides is Doggie DayCare. At $35 a day, owners that bring there pet in 5 days a week are paying around $10,000 a year on doggie daycare alone. Tomb says “there are about 80 dogs that come in regularly on the week days for daycare.”

Tomb’s plans to add 6 to 7 “Palace Suites” and 12 to 15 “Presidential Suites” to the Silicon Valley location because of its success. Tomb doesn’t have plans to open another location, because she believes by expanding the quality will go down and in such a customer service driven business, quality matters.

For more information on the Pooch Hotel and to watch the interview and tour of the location Tomb did with Forbes, click on the linkbelow: